Improving ground support QA/QC to prevent premature

failure during seismic events

Rhett Hassell
Senior Geotechnical Engineer
Northern Star Resources

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 “We installed a lot ground support, why didn’t it work”
• This picture shows an ore Damage to ore drive following M+1.6 event
drive that was damaged
from a M+1.6 seismic
events.
• It took 3 months of
painful rehab to get back
to the stope brow and
re-start stoping.
• We invested a lot of
money on ground
support that ultimately
did not work.
• Was it a design or
implementation issue?

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 Sometimes more is not the answer
• Observations from this event
plus others has shown how
critical it is to get the
implementation of the design
correct.
• The following slides
summarises some of the issues
we have identified and
proposed solutions

Page 3
 Cable bolts – Barrel & Wedge
• >30 cable plates were counted on the Failed barrel & wedges at low loads
floor following the seismic event. Most
had failed at loads well below design.
• Cable bolts are there to do the heavy
lifting during a seismic event.
• The cable should break before the
barrel/wedge/plate.
• Failure was caused by corrosion on the
internal surface of the barrel/outside
of the wedge.
• This prevents sliding of the wedges
and causes the cable to shear through Some worked
the wedge teeth at low loads.

Page 4 Failed wedge

 Greasing of Barrel & Wedge Anchors
• Grease is to be applied to the surface between the inside of the barrel and the outside of the wedge.
• We recommended an anti-seize grease (Molybond GOG)
• Relying on the operators to install is problematic but slowly changing the culture.

Barrel & wedge anchors to be greased before installation

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 Cable bolts - tensioning
• Cable bolts were previously tensioned to
2000kPa. Equivalent to ~2-4t of force. This is
regarded as low strand tension (see adjacent
Figure).
• For full teeth penetration 10-12t of force is
required.
• Alan Thompson “To avoid slippages during use,
it is important that the cable bolt is fully
stressed at time of installation to a force equal
to 0.5 TUlt ( ~125kN for a 15.2mm diameter
pre-stressing strand).
• We changed the cable bolt tensioner to cut out
over 10t.

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 Cable bolts – splaying wires
• If premature failure of the barrel and wedge anchor does occur
splaying of the cable strands may prevent the
barrel/wedge/plate sliding off the strand.
• Splaying cables is possible but manually intensive.
• Requires mechanical assistance if it is going to be taken up by
the Australian mining industry.

Page 7
 Cable bolts – metal epoxy
• We are currently investigating if
placing a metal epoxy/glue behind
the wedge to act as a barrier in case
of premature failure is a viable
option.

Page 8
 Cable bolts – Plate capacity
• Need to match the cable bolt plate with the cable bolt capacity.
• The previously used plate hole was too large for the barrel and wedge
anchor and we had instances of the barrel punching through the plate.
• Completed some simple static testing to determine the best
pate/barrel & wedge combination.

Failed plate where the barrel has punched through the plate.

Page 9
 Cable bolts – grout encapsulation
• Pressure grouting vs Retreat grouting
• We saw two main benefits with retreat grouting:
• Fill encapsulation to the collar (pressure grouting leaves 0.1-0.3m ungrouted). This
should result in reduced load transfer for the barrel/wedge/plate assemblage.
• Operationally much quicker than pressure grouting
• But how to ensure it is being done correctly:
• Training and dedicated cable bolt crew.
• Audits. Is there grout on the floor. Working out the time required to fill a hole and
timing operators

No encapsulation of the cable bolt at the collar Retreat grouting training.

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 Install as much of the ground support as possible during the development
cycle
• Previous ground support standards had a development
standard
• Mesh grade to grade with dynamic followed.
• This was followed by an upgrade to ground support
prior to stoping.
• Mesh below grade, cable bolting and shotcrete to
protect ground support below grade.
• Lag of 30m between the upgraded ground support and
the stoping front.
• Unfortunately the damage from seismic events doesn’t
always conform to the stoping lag distance.
• Operationally it was painful to get jumbo resources
back into a stoping area. Damage to the rock mass where no ground support was installed.

• All current ground support standards install all the

jumbo ground support during the development cycle.

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 Resin encapsulation
• Engineer “I’ve calculated how much resin I need by working out the volume of the drill
hole minus the volume of the bolt, oh and I’ll add 30% for good measure”

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 Resin encapsulation
• Engineer “I’ve calculated how much resin I need by working out the volume of the drill
hole minus the volume of the bolt, oh and I’ll add 30% for good measure”

• Jumbo Operator “Trying to get these resin cartridges into this hole is causing me a lot of
grief and is too slow. I’ll use a bigger bit to make life easier”

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 Resin encapsulation
The result

Resin

Page 14
 Resin encapsulation
• Pumpable resin
may provide the
solution.

Page 15
 The next advancement - Acoustic Testing?

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 Thankyou & comments/questions

How do we support the floor?

Page 17